Dinner time at our house is 6 PM. In my opinion, it’s like the perfect time. Not too early, gives Daddy and I a couple of hours to catch up on our TV shows or to watch a movie and afterwards gives us time to do our own thing before bed. I’m usually very good about having dinner done before six, but there are times where that doesn’t happen.

The other night, I made baked spaghetti. It’s one of Daddy’s favorites. As I was shredding the cheese to put on top right before popping it in the oven, I asked Daddy what time it was. He told me it was 6:18. 6:18!! I found myself standing there thinking how did this happen. I had no idea how I had let time get away from me. From the living room Daddy told me to calm down, that it wasn’t a big deal, and that I’m not a failure. Daddy knows very well how my mind works because I have this thing where if I mess up, and I don’t even have to mess up, I don’t know how to really describe it, but I start feeling like I have let Daddy down and that I am a failure as a slave.

Before I go any further I want to clarify that Daddy hasn’t done or said anything to make me feel this way if things don’t go as planned. This is one of those things that is totally on me.

I know I’m human. Since I am human, that means I’m going to make mistakes. There is nothing I can do to change that. I will never be perfect, no matter how hard I try. Something that I have always been working on, and probably will be working on until the day I die is that if I make a mistake, it isn’t the end of the world. If dinner is a little late, if I accidentally run out of something(very rarely happens, but it does!), or forget to run an errand, the world is not going to start crumbling around me, but it feels that way. Especially when it’s something for Daddy.

I hate the idea of letting Daddy down or Him be disappointed in me. It’s the worst feeling in the world and I’m pretty sure a lot of s-types out there will agree with that. When I feel like that, I know I just wanna find a hole to crawl in and stay there for a while until the self-loathing stops(because honestly, that’s kinda what it really is, at least for me). Something else I’ve noticed about myself when I make mistakes is I have a tendency to then hyper-focus on the mistake I made which then means I lose focus of a lot of other stuff and then tend to make even more mistakes which then starts spiraling out of control. When this starts to happen, I find myself having to take a step back and center myself.

I know, believe me, I know how terrible it is to feel like a failure and how easy it is to focus on the mistakes(if you’re like me, you tend to see yourself as failing, maybe not a huge failure, but you still see it as a failure) you’ve made. But you can’t focus on the mistakes you’ve made. The best thing you can do is to learn from your failings. Okay, you screwed up. Take a moment to see how and why you messed up and learn from that. You also need to realize that just because you failed at something, doesn’t make YOU a failure. You are NOT your mistakes. I do know this is something that’s easier said than done, but like everything else in life, it takes time. Here are some other tips I’ve found that can help when you find yourself feeling like a failure.

• Don’t compare yourself to others. There have been so many times I find myself thinking that so and so wouldn’t have made the mistake I did. There’s a good chance that so and so would make the same mistake as well because so and so is human and plus, you are you and not so and so.

• Learn from your failures. When you make a mistake, you’re given an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and it also gives a great opportunity for personal growth. I have learned a lot about myself as a person and a slave from my mistakes.

• Ask for reassurance.  Once upon a time, my godfather told me some really awesome advice that I carry with me to this very day. Until you can see yourself the way others see you, then trust the opinions of those people. If you need to hear from someone who you’re not a failure, ask. From time to time, I need reassurance from Daddy that I’m not a failure.

• It’s not a failure until you give up. No matter how many times you may fail at a task, you never truly fail until you give up. I really like this quote by Marc Chernoff: You never fail until you’re satisfied with failure. – Failure is not falling down; failure is staying down when you have the choice to get back up. Sometimes you have to fail a thousand times to succeed. Which means you haven’t really failed yet; you’ve just found a bunch of ways that don’t work. So don’t get so hung up on a few failed attempts that you miss every new opportunity coming your way.

It’s hard dealing with failure in a vanilla setting, but from my personal experience, dealing with failure within a power exchange relationship sometimes feels like it’s multiplied by a thousand and that is such a sucky feeling. But you can’t let that sucky feeling define you and your submission.